Global Warming behind Austrian Encephalitis Case

Medical experts confirmed on Thursday that four people recently fell ill with tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) in western Austria after eating homemade goats’ cheese.

A shepherd in western Vorarlberg province, who had checked into hospital in July with flu-like symptoms, was found to have the illness following a blood test.

But the man said he had noticed no tick bites, the usual method of transmission, two experts from the Institute of Virology at Vienna Medical University wrote in an article published Thursday.

Doctors finally traced the cause of the illness to the cheese, which the shepherd had made from unpasteurised goat’s and cow’s milk on an isolated pasture at over 1,560-metre (5,120-feet) altitude.

Three other members of his family, who had not been on the pasture, also exhibited flu-like symptoms and headaches.

Further tests found that one of the goats, whose milk had been used to make the cheese, as well as other animals who had eaten leftovers, had developed TBE anti-bodies, meaning they had also been infected.

Ticks were believed until now to be found only below 1,350-metre altitude, but this may have changed due to global warming, the experts said.

Cases of TBE infections via dairy products were reported in recent years almost exclusively in Baltic countries.

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13 thoughts on “Global Warming behind Austrian Encephalitis Case”

We have a greek proverb: whenever you year of many cherries, take a small basket.

This is completely anecdotal unless one has the history of the goat ( I know that goats are transferred from field to field in modern days by truck), whether any ticks have been found at such height ( in contrast to fold wisdom that they do not survive over 1000 meters) are the two questions that come to mind, before, even anecdotally, one blames global warming for this.

We have some cases of tick born encephalitis in the news recently from northern greece, and instruction of what to do if bitten by a tick.

Well, it may have changed due to warming, or it may not have. The insidious thing is that when they say global warming, what they mean is man-made global warming. AGW is the modern-day bogey-man and scapegoat for anything bad that happens.

I wonder where the goat came from and how long ago it was there. And did any one see the tick? If I remember correctly they move the goats around high pastures in summer and low pastures in winter. Also when was the cheese made? This story has no classic investigative information. I think this is just a convenient way to warm up the warm story.

I didn’t know tics had built-in altimiters. Perhaps there is an EU regulation governing their maximum altitude? Arrest those parasites!
REPLY: It is climate preference zones, not air pressure, that determine where many critters live. – Anthony

I recently enquired of a local scientist whether a paralysis tick that was reported by our early explorers in the Australian Alps is still recorded there.
He said it wasn’t.
It seems it was warmer in 1824 in these alps than now.
These ticks however, certainly hitch a ride on birds and most other animals.

TBE is a big problem in Siberia, well known for its balmy weather. Actually the two worst areas I know for ticks is Eastern Siberia and the area around Lake Superior, both with extremely cold winters. So apparently ticks can stand very cold winters, provided summers are warm enough. Here in Sweden we have TBE almost to the Arctic Circle so those 1350 meters in the Alps are probably a bit optimistic.